Planning for Tomorrow’s Hybrid Communication

As people are starting to get vaccinated, we can finally envision life at the office again. But we see a big challenge looming around the corner: 

How do we effectively communicate with two audiences at the same time, one remote and the other in-person? And how do we create an equitable experience for these two audiences? 

Pre-covid, you might have had the occasional hybrid meeting or training, the majority of stakeholders sitting at the conference room and one or two disembodied voices chiming in from overhead speakers. The name for this is Hybrid Communication: speakers or audiences who are both in-person and virtual.

Back in 2019, as a professional speaker for in-person presentations, I invited my remote audience to participate only as an afterthought. In all fairness, they were often not on camera, so it was easy to forget. And quite frankly, it felt too challenging to handle both audiences at once. You might have had the same experience. The term to describe this is Distance Bias. Did you unconsciously pay more attention to those who were right in front of you?  

Then, in 2020, we all had to become proficient overnight at virtual communication. Despite all the negatives of covid, one positive was that for once, co-workers from around the world were on a level playing field. Remote colleagues were no longer forgotten behind the screen. Together we figured out together how to mute and unmute (mostly), how to turn on the camera and let people see our home life, and eventually how to meet, present, and discuss in a virtual room like we had been doing this for years.

Now in 2021, once again we will need to adapt -- back to hybrid communication. Before we do, let’s take a moment to envision what inclusive work communication will look like. The truth is, many of us will want to be there in person, but it may take some time. Companies made commitments to the Work From Anywhere life, and many people have relocated away from their company’s office. That means more of our audience will be virtual than before. And because of our experience during the pandemic, virtual audiences will expect more than they used to. 

It’s not going to be easy, but with the right strategies, we can do it, and do it so much better than we used to. 

Follow these 4 tips to start mentally preparing for the shift to hybrid: 

1. Default to virtual. 

During this transitional period, if the majority of your participants are going to be in one room, go virtual. This means people who are on-site can join virtually from their desks or across multiple conference rooms, and virtual participants can join from home. This may seem counterintuitive because it’s easier to get things done in-person and you might want to see your colleagues in 3D. However, the in-person team members will naturally assume the decision making power and may unconsciously ignore those wanting to contribute and influence from Google Meets, Zoom, or WebEx. As a meeting host, you want to acknowledge distance bias and reinforce that the team works best when they hear all voices. This will be key to making meetings more inclusive during this transition time. But as more and more people return to the office, we will have to rethink this strategy. 

2. Have a moderator or co-host on the other side.

Hybrid meetings will come with a lot to manage. That means more than ever it will be helpful to have someone to help you. If you are presenting live, your co-host or moderator is virtual. And visa versa. That will build accountability for both audiences and to really make sure that the tech is taken care of in both the office and the virtual audiences. Have a plan for how your co-host will interrupt you if something isn’t right.

3. Plan for how you can be inclusive throughout the meeting.

For example: 

At the start: The virtual host greets their virtual audience and the in-person host meets the in-person people and then they merge. Or the in person host greets both and leaves the first 3-5 minutes for allowing people to filter in and greet them by name. Try to give equal attention. Have your virtual audience on the big screen so that you and your in person audience can see them clearly (not just on a tiny laptop screen).

In the middle: If you want to brainstorm or have discussion in small groups, you can give clear verbal directions to both groups (also written down in a doc for people to reference). You can pair up the in person participants to talk, then send the virtual participants to a breakout room to discuss. Afterwards, the host or co-hosts can report back anything that came up during the in-person and virtual breakouts. 

At the end: Go back and forth between virtual and in-person audiences for questions. Think about leveraging a live document or Slack channel that can act as the chat used to for an all virtual meeting. If ⅔ of your audience is virtual, focus on answering slightly more questions from the virtual audience compared to in person. 

4. Expect the tech and the norms to evolve. 

Remember how quickly teams were establishing new norms at the beginning of the pandemic? For example, teams were figuring out how they wanted to use the chat, if people raise their physical or virtual hand, and how to use breakout rooms. And then the software quickly developed after to keep up with these new demands. Expect the same thing to happen again. It’s too early to know exactly what those new norms and demands will be, but no doubt things will be evolving rapidly once again.  Some examples of factors we will need to work out are: 

• What happens to the chat in hybrid meetings? 

• How will the in-person meeting host be able to keep track of the order of raised hands? 

• Where will the cameras and mics in the rooms be placed?

As you can probably tell, the switch to hybrid will have a steep learning curve. There are lots of factors to consider and iron out. But unlike the move to virtual which happened overnight, the move to hybrid will likely be more gradual---giving us time to adapt and make changes as we go. 

If you have ideas for how to make hybrid communication more effective and inclusive, please share them with us in the comments below or at info@lhctraining.com. Together we can do this!